Words for the SOTU

Words for the SOTU

In a national poll conducted for Time and CNN shortly
before the 2000 election, respondents were asked whether they
considered themselves to be among the wealthiest one percent of all
Americans. Purveyors of class warfare must have been despondent to
learn - and the president would do well to remember - that 19
percent believed they earned enough to qualify for that
exalted status. Another 20 percent told the pollsters that they
fully expected to enter the ranks of the wealthiest one percent in
the near future. Imagine: Two in five Americans hear the heated
rhetoric about the "wealthiest one percent" and take it as a
personal affront!

This optimism is not "irrational exuberance." Glenn Hubbard,
chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisors, points to
studies that confirm the enormous upward economic mobility in
American society. Over a ten-year period, Hubbard notes, 66 percent
of low-wage earners earn enough to move up to a higher bracket.

The president speaks to the aspiring millionaires among us when
he describes how ending the double taxation of dividends will boost
the value of our 401(k)s and how lower marginal tax rates will
benefit everyone. He should be unapologetic when he explains how
workers could use private retirement accounts, carved out from a
portion of their Social Security taxes, to secure their futures and
pass along a nest egg to their children. He should burst with pride
when he tells us how tax credits for uninsured workers to purchase
health coverage would end their exposure to the devastating
financial consequences of uninsured medical catastrophes and allow
them to build future wealth. He should let his emotions betray his
passion when he explains how meaningful forms of educational choice
would allow parents who are frustrated with failing and dangerous
public schools to save their children by moving them to successful
schools.

If President Bush seizes the mantle of Reaganesque optimism, his
ambitious domestic agenda will prevail.

Michael
G. Franc is vice president for government relations at the
Heritage Foundation.